Why am I so afraid of mingling?

I was at a meetup tonight, and after a round of introductions, the host said "and now we'll mingle before the talk!" At that point, I literally hid in the bathroom. I waited there until the sounds of mingling died down, and I knew it was safe to rejoin and watch the talk. This wasn't the first time I've hidden in the bathroom during the mingling part of a meetup. It wasn't even the second or third time. Bathrooms and me, we're old friends.

So why am I afraid of mingling? Let's break it down:

• Fear of the approach: I have to pick somebody to go up to, and hope they also wanted me to approach, or are okay with me approaching them. I have to tell myself that they're not going to groan to themselves "ugh, I didn't want them to approach!" I know that, rationally, I shouldn't feel so unworthy of their desire to speak with me, but emotionally, I have that tendency. I am working through that, in therapy and a Radical Acceptance reading club with my partner, but I'm not to the point yet where I can think to myself, "sure, anyone would love to talk to me!" and wholeheartedly believe it.
• Uncertainty on the topic: Assuming I manage to approach someone, I then have to figure out the right conversation topic. At the meetup, the introductions included a "Ask me about ___" prompt and a "One time, I built ___ " prompt, designed to give us topics to talk about. Because of that, I think I could have approached a few people with a topic that I knew was relevant to my interests, and I'm thankful they provided that fodder for us. I also heard a nice prompt suggested tonight as a general conversation starter, "What's something you've learned recently?" I'd like to try that out, at meetups that don't provide any introduction fodder.
• Fear of the finish: I have yet to figure out a good way to wind down a topic and leave it on a positive note. Instead, my 1-on-1 conversations often feel like they wither and die a slow, agonizing death. I've gotten suggestions like claiming you have to go to the bathroom, but I don't know that I'm a good enough liar for that, and that I can reasonably use that for every conversation. That's why I much prefer time-bucketed conversations or group conversations that allow for easy in-out transitions.

I know that my anxieties around mingling are fears that I need to work through, as they're tied to my underlying social anxieties in life. But I also believe that events can make networking less intimidating for those of us with these anxieties, and that's why I'm a big fan of more structured mingling. For example, at this meetup, they could have blown a whistle at the end of 4 minutes, and forced everyone to mingle with a new person, and that would have helped with my fear of approach and finish.

I wrote up more about making networking easier in this earlier post, and I think that the pre-matched speed networking is still my favorite of all the structured mingling attempts I've experienced. I hope more events experiment with that. Just in case I'm not the only one that hides in bathrooms. :)